Technut News

MIT, Chesonis Foundation announce solar revolution

Promising to transform solar power from a “boutique” option to an affordable, dependable, mainstream energy solution, MIT and the Chesonis Family Foundation today launched a “solar revolution” with the ultimate aim of making solar energy America’s primary carbon-free fuel.

The Solar Revolution Project (SRP), funded by a $10 million gift from the Foundation, will explore new materials and systems that could dramatically accelerate the availability of solar energy. The SRP will complement and interact closely with other large solar projects at MIT, creating one of the largest solar energy clusters at any research university.

The Chesonis gift will allow MIT to explore bold approaches that are essential for transforming the solar industry. Specifically, it will focus on three elements –capture, conversion and storage — that will ultimately make solar power a viable, near-term energy source.

“Solar is thought of as an ultimate energy technology off in the distant future. The goal of SRP is to move this timeframe nearer to the present. The SRP will make solar a practical alternative, by committing a 10-year timeframe for establishing the new base of scientific knowledge it will take to draw a market-competitive energy supply from the sun,” said Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry at MIT, who will direct the SRP. “With SRP, think ’solar’ and think ‘now.’ This is the revolution that is implied in the project name.”

Professor Ernest Moniz, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), said, “Climate change makes the search for more environmentally benign sources of energy urgent and hugely important. Many experts have concluded that solar energy is a key, if not the key answer to our global energy challenges in the long term.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Mapping the individual - cheaply

Had one of his parents been slightly less fortunate in their choice of a mate, James Watson might not have helped discover the structure of DNA in 1953. Instead, he would have been born deaf, and then lost his sight as he became a teenager. Equally, as he is, had he been less fortunate in the genetic lottery when he chose his wife, either of their sons might have had the same fate.

This is because Watson’s complete DNA - his genome - contains a single gene for Usher’s syndrome, an inherited disorder which affects hearing and sight. Watson’s must have come from one of his parents. Usher’s is a “recessive” disease - you need two copies of the gene to be affected. About five people per 100,000 carry the gene, so Watson’s chances of being disabled weren’t large. But they were real.

…

The rapidly falling cost and time needed to map your DNA

2003
$437,000,000
13 years to map

2007
$10,000,000
4 years

2008
$100,000
4 weeks

2012
$100*
2 days

*Forecast

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eSolar Announces Breakthrough Pre-Fabricated Solar Power Plants

Today, eSolar, a producer of scalable solar thermal power plants, announced that it has closed $130 million in funding from Idealab, Google.org, Oak Investment Partners, and other investors for the construction and deployment of pre-fabricated power plants. Designed to address the complex issues surrounding large or utility-scale power projects, eSolar’s distributed solar thermal plants achieve economies of scale at 33 MW, and are modularly scaled to fit the needs of large and small utilities.

“The eSolar™ power plant is based on mass manufactured components, and designed for rapid construction, uniform modularity, and unlimited scalability,” said Asif Ansari, CEO of eSolar. “Rather than over-engineering the solution, eSolar’s smart scalable solar architecture targets what we see as the four key business obstacles facing the sector: price, scalability, rapid deployment, and grid impact.”

In order to deliver on the promise of Big Solar, the typical utility-scale installation faces huge construction costs and requires large tracts of real estate, combined with expensive transmission line improvements to bring the power out of the deserts and into the cities. eSolar’s modular approach stands in direct contrast to this ‘bigger is better’ strategy. eSolar has replaced expensive steel, concrete, and brute force with inexpensive computing power and elegant algorithms. This new method of installing a solar power plant minimizes costly civil construction and the use of heavy equipment, dramatically reducing project cost and deployment time.

Centering on eSolar’s 33 MW pre-fab form-factor, the company’s modular design translates to minimal land requirements. The company’s solar power plant solutions are tailored to fit local resources and produce a low environmental footprint, favoring a straightforward siting and permitting process. Myriad locations combined with a multitude of interconnection options mean that eSolar can deliver more clean, carbon free power where it is needed: near the cities and towns where it is consumed.

“eSolar’s primary business goal is nothing short of making solar electricity for less than the price of coal, without subsidies,” said Bill Gross, eSolar Chairman and Founder of Idealab. “This is not only attainable, but will truly change the world.”

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World’s smallest transistor is the size of a molecule

Scientists have created the world’s smallest transistor, one little bigger than a single molecule.

A team in Manchester last year announced that it had created transistors that measured 50 atoms across. Now they have slashed the size of the transistors to just 10 atoms, marking the first true electronic nanocomponent, where a nanometre is one billionth of a metre, and a single human hair is 100,000 nanometres across.

The University of Manchester team led by Prof Andre Geim has been fashioning the transistors from the world’s thinnest material, called graphene, consisting of carbon atoms a single layer thick, arranged in a hexagonal pattern like that seen in chicken wire.

Working with Dr Kostya Novoselov, he believes that the world’s smallest transistor, described in the journal Science, could spark the development of super-fast computer chips.

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Discovery of the decade? Injection ‘could cure Alzheimer’s in minutes’

An injection that dramatically relieved the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease within minutes would qualify as the discovery of the decade. That is exactly what was claimed yesterday for an experimental treatment being tested in America.

Scientists at the Institute for Neurological Research at the University of California have treated around 50 patients at a private clinic by injecting an anti-arthritic drug, etanercept, into the spinal column in the neck and then tilting the patients to encourage the drug to flow to the brain.

They claim 90 per cent respond to the treatment, usually within minutes, and have released videos of patients to prove it.

In one, a nurse sits down with an 82-year-old patient, Marvin Millar, who frowns and mumbles incoherently as she asks him identify everyday objects such as a bracelet and a pencil, which he is unable to do.

But five minutes after being injected with etanercept – according to the film which was supplied and edited by the clinic – he greets his wife. Visibly shocked, she says he has not recognised her for years. Mr Miller then hugs her.

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Double Your Lifespan with a Drug that Mutates Your Ribosomes

It’s been known for a while that restricting your diet will increase your lifespan, but now researchers have shown one reason why: Eating less causes your ribosomes (your cells’ protein factories) to mutate. And it’s looking like mutated ribosomes (pictured here) could be one key to life extension. The good news is that you may not have to starve yourself to mutate your ribosomes anymore. Biologists at the University of Washington have managed to induce the life-extending mutation in ribosomes with a drug that doubles the lifespan of yeast cells.

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Are nanobots on their way?

US researchers have built a proto-prototype nano assembler

The first real steps towards building a microscopic device that can construct nano machines have been taken by US researchers. Writing in the peer-reviewed publication, International Journal of Nanomanufacturing from Inderscience Publishers, researchers describe an early prototype for a nanoassembler.

In his 1986 book, The Engines of Creation, K Eric Drexler set down the long-term aim of nanotechnology - to create an assembler, a microscopic device, a robot, that could construct yet smaller devices from individual atoms and molecules.

For the last two decades, those researchers who recognized the potential have taken diminutive steps towards such a nanoassembler. Those taking the top-down approach have seen the manipulative power of the atomic force microscope (AFM), a machine that can observe and handle single atoms, as one solution. Those taking the bottom-up approach are using chemistry to build molecular machinery.

However, neither the top-down nor the bottom-up approach is yet to fulfill Drexler’s prophecy of functional nanobots that can construct other machines on a scale of just a few billionths of a meter.

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Also see:

Is Algae BioFuel Ready to Hit the US Market?

Algae: ‘The ultimate in renewable energy’

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Japan Gears Up to Become a Full-On Robot Nation

If you’ve noticed an unusually large number of utilitarian humanoids hailing from Japan in the last few years, then you probably won’t be surprised to hear about the country’s official robot initiative. Right now, Japan is in the midst of executing a grand plan to make robots an integrated part of everyday life. To compensate for the shortage of young workers willing to do menial tasks, the Japan Robot Association, the government, and several technology institutions drafted a formal plan to create a society in which robots live side by side with humans by the year 2010. Since 2010 is just a couple years away, I called up a roboticist at the forefront of this movement to find out how it’s going.

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Scientists teach a computer to recognize attractiveness in women

“Beauty,” goes the old saying, “is in the eye of the beholder.” But does the beholder have to be human? Not necessarily, say scientists at Tel Aviv University. Amit Kagian, an M.Sc. graduate from the TAU School of Computer Sciences, has successfully “taught” a computer how to interpret attractiveness in women.

Kagian published the findings in the scientific journal Vision Research. Co-authors on the work were Kagian’s supervisors Prof. Eytan Ruppin and Prof. Gideon Dror. The study combined the worlds of computer programming and psychology, an example of the multidisciplinary research for which TAU is world-renowned.

But there’s a more serious dimension to this issue that reaches beyond mere vanity. The discovery is a step towards developing artificial intelligence in computers. Other applications for the software could be in plastic and reconstructive surgery and computer visualization programs such as face recognition technologies.

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Stem cell breakthrough offers diabetes hope

Scientists have discovered a new technique for turning embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing pancreatic tissue in what could prove a significant breakthrough in the quest to find new treatments for diabetes.

The University of Manchester team, working with colleagues at the University of Sheffield, were able to genetically manipulate the stem cells so that they produced an important protein known as a ‘transcription factor’.

Stem cells have the ability to become any type of cell, so scientists believe they may hold the key to treating a number of diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes.

However, a major stumbling block to developing new treatments has been the difficulty scientists have faced ensuring the stem cells turn into the type of cell required for any particular condition - in the case of diabetes, pancreatic cells.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Nanomaterial turns radiation directly into electricity

Materials that directly convert radiation into electricity could produce a new era of spacecraft and even Earth-based vehicles powered by high-powered nuclear batteries, say US researchers.

Electricity is usually made using nuclear power by heating steam to rotate turbines that generate electricity.

But beginning in the 1960s, the US and Soviet Union used thermoelectric materials that convert heat into electricity to power spacecraft using nuclear fission or decaying radioactive material. The Pioneer missions were among those using the latter, “nuclear battery” approach.

Dispensing with the steam and turbines makes those systems smaller and less complicated. But thermoelectric materials have very low efficiency. Now US researchers say they have developed highly efficient materials that can convert the radiation, not heat, from nuclear materials and reactions into electricity.

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Matrix-style virtual worlds ‘a few years away’

Are supercomputers on the verge of creating Matrix-style simulated realities? Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, thinks so. He says that virtual worlds realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing are just a few years away.

In 1950, Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, proposed the ultimate test of artificial intelligence – a human judge engaging in a three-way conversation with a machine and another human should be unable to reliably distinguish man from machine.

A variant on this “Turing Test” is the “Graphics Turing Test”, the twist being that a human judge viewing and interacting with an artificially generated world should be unable to reliably distinguish it from reality.

“By interaction we mean you could control an object – rotate it, for example – and it would render in real-time,” McGuigan says.

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New Wind Power Record in Spain: 40.8% of Total Demand!

Last year we wrote about Spain’s wind power production record, which was 27% at the time. That seemed like a lot, but a week ago, Spain’s wind turbines produced 40.8% of total demand, or 9,862 megawatts of power.

There’s a catch, though. The previous record was 10,032 megawatts, but that was 28% of total consumption because it happened during a week day and demand was higher. So this new record is a relative record, while the previous one stands as the absolute best in electricity produced. Still, it’s impressive and we hope that others will pay attention and realize that it can be done.

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Man-made molecules reverse liver cirrhosis in rats

Scientists in Japan have designed artificial molecules that when used with rats successfully reversed liver cirrhosis, a serious chronic disease in humans that until now can only be cured by transplants.

Cirrhosis is the hardening or scarring of the liver, and is caused by factors such as heavy drinking and Hepatitis B and C. The disease is especially serious in parts of Asia, including China.

Cirrhosis occurs when a class of liver cells starts producing collagen, a fibrous material that toughens skin and tendons. Such damage cannot be reversed although steps can be taken to prevent further damage. In advanced cases, transplants are the only way out.

In the journal Nature Biotechnology, the researchers said they designed molecules that can block collagen production by liver “stellate cells,” which are also known to absorb vitamin A.

The scientists then loaded the molecules into carriers that were coated with vitamin A, which tricked the stellate cells into absorbing the molecules.

“By packaging the (molecules) in carriers coated with vitamin A, they tricked the stellate cells into letting in the inhibitor, which shut down collagen secretion,” the researchers wrote.

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